Guilt
by badmotherfuhrer
Summary: Red, Yellow, Blue, and Green all took down Team Rocket once and for all, but Red lost his life. Blue's felt guilty ever since, and now her guilt is ruining her relationships.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I'm not an unhappy girl. Quite the opposite, in fact. I've always loved the sunshine, the rainbows, the singing birds, and especially the rain. Above all else I loved the rain. My mother had said I'd been like that since I was born. She'd said it was thundering outside when she was in labor, and right when I came out of the womb, there was complete silence. Not a sound was heard, except for the soft pitter-patter of the rain on the windows. Since then, not a day had gone by when I didn't smile at the rain.

I should have been smiling then, too, because it was indeed raining. But for the fourth time that day, I found myself in an armchair with my face in my hands, sobbing softly.

Why here, of all places? Why now, of all times? What had I done to deserve this? Had I really done some great wrong in this life?

_Yes_, a voice kept saying to me. _You know what you've done_, it would say. _You know what you are_. I cried harder, trying desperately to drown out the voice with my tears.

_There's no escaping this, you know that_, said the voice. _No one's going to believe you if you confess. You might as well just kill yourself now_. The voice had been saying this for quite some time, and it sounded quite serious. I could do nothing in my defense but rock back and forth on my chair and wait for it to be over.

Which, to my surprise, was rather quickly. The clock struck five. Yellow would be getting up soon. I stood up, dried my eyes as best I could, and tried to make it to the shower before—

"You're up early." Too late. I slowly turned around to see a too-cheery Yellow standing before me, already dressed in her running gear. Her contagious smile quickly shifted to concern at the sight of my tearstained face, however. "Orrrrrr you never went to sleep," she finally added. I nodded and pointed at her in wordless agreement.

"Was it the memories again?" She asked in genuine concern. I could feel my bottom lip quiver for a bit before I finally nodded. "Oh honey, come here," she said, briskly walking over to me to give me a giant bear hug, as only Yellow can muster. I had no choice but to hug back as tight as I could. She was my best friend's sister, after all. The way I saw it, I didn't have much choice.

We held each other for a few minutes before she softly asked me, "It's been six months, Blue. When are you gonna tell me what happened down there?"

"Yellow," I said, "I can't. I just can't do it. You'll never forgive me." I was talking too fast, as if the memories would pour out any second if I didn't keep my mouth occupied with something else, no matter how menial. She looked down at me, breaking our embrace slightly.

"You never know until you tell me," she said softly, smiling at me. I could still detect a hint of concern in her expression, the kind I have been seeing for six months now. Seeing it again made me want to bawl some more. I buried my head in her chest, sobbing harder this time. She held me tighter with one arm and rubbed my back with the other, cooing softly.

Yellow wasn't the type to press anything out of anyone; of that much I was certain. However, it was because of this very quality that she was the go-to girl for any consolation. She didn't mind this at all, of course. See, she was the type of girl who had her entire life in order. She was hot, smart, in control of and at peace with every facet of her life, and not only that, she possessed some sort of inner wisdom about everybody and everything, making her the perfect person to spill your problems to. No matter how mundane someone's problem seemed to be to the outsider, Yellow would ignore all that, and instead look upon the face of her latest patient with an expression of unimaginable sincerity and beauty. And after all was said to her, Yellow would think for a minute, slowly open her mouth, and begin to give the most profound answer any human could have ever come up with. This happened time and time again. Not once did someone walk away from her feeling unsatisfied, as if the advice they were given was somehow incomplete. They always walked away with tears dried, concerns alleviated, and faces beaming. Knowing all this, why, then, could I not tell her what happened six months ago?

_If you tell her now, she'll hate you for the rest of her life_, I heard in my head. _She'll never forgive you for what you are_. I tried hard to shut out the voice. 'Have to keep my mind occupied,' I thought.

"Well, it's getting light out," I said after a long silence, breaking our hug. "You and Growlithe better get running, huh?" I smiled as best I could.

Smiling back, she said, "Yeah." She grabbed her belt and took Growlithe's Pokéball off of it. "Stay strong, ok?" She added. "Your Pokémon need you too." And with that, she was out the door.

After staring at the door for a bit in contemplation, I turned and slowly walked into my bathroom to take a shower. Getting undressed and turning on the water, I took a moment to stare at my reflection. I saw a girl, aged 24, with a smorgasbord of expressions on her face. Looking carefully, I could spy the obvious signs of fatigue, stress, and depression, the subtle signs of fear and hopelessness, and even a tinge of anger. Troubling as this all was, what was on my face was not nearly as frightening as what was absent.

I could see no signs of happiness, not a sliver of hope, and certainly not a shred of dignity.

Looking down in defeat, I got into the tub and showered, letting the water gently beat against my face. At least in here, I didn't live in constant fear of the voice. The water even felt like rain, if I closed my eyes and pretended hard enough…

Finishing my shower, I walked into my room and located my favorite book of quotes. Sitting on my bed, I opened to a random page as per my morning ritual and located a quote that read, "You're only as sick as your secrets, but the Truth shall set you Free."

Exasperated by this, I threw the book on the floor. I fell back on my bed, finally exhausted, and began to fall asleep. Many a word flew through my head as I was drifting off, but the last one I would remember for the rest of my life.

Murderer.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

"Blue, I'm home!" I vaguely heard.

"Blue?" It was Yellow. Lifting my head off the pillow it was on, I slowly came to my senses.

"In here!" I reflexively yelled. I heard Yellow opening my door.

"Look who I brought," she started to say, but quickly yelled, "Oh my gosh, I'm sorry!" followed by a quick slam of the door.

"What?" I yelled after her, confused.

"I'm sorry!" She yelled through the door. "I didn't realize you weren't dressed." Looking down at my body, I could see that it was, indeed, completely bare.

"Oh," I said quietly, more to myself than anybody else. "My bad," I said, louder this time. I hopped out of bed, quickly got dressed, and walked out to the living room where Yellow was. Turning the corner of the entrance, I also saw—

"Green!" I ran over to him, giving him the biggest hug in the known universe.

"Hey, Bluebird," He said with a smile. I loved it when he called me that. I ruffled his already-messy brown hair.

"How you doing, Green Bean?" I asked affectionately, eliciting an even wider smile from Green.

"Survivin'," He said with his boyish half-smile. "You?"

"Better now," I said, grinning like an idiotic schoolgirl. I absolutely adored Green, and he knew it. I looked over at Yellow, who gave me one of those "I know what's up" looks.

"Well," she said, "I've got some errands I need to run, so I'm gonna leave you two alone." She walked out the door, Pokéballs in hand.

I always did love Yellow ever so much.

"So," Green said, smiling his famous half-smile, "Whatchoo wanna do?" I gave him the naughtiest look I could muster.

"I dunno," I said coyly, "What do YOU wanna do?"

Looking me square in the eye, he said, "I wanna get naked and make some bad decisions." That surprised even me for a split second, but I instinctively grabbed his hand and ran towards my bedroom, Green in tow. Throwing the door shut, I whipped off my shirt and slammed my lips into his, working his shirt off while I did so. I could feel him unbuckling my pants, while I moved on to taking his off. The whole time, we moved closer and closer to the bed, and somehow, my bra was now off. Pushing me down, Green got on top of me and gave me the hottest kiss imaginable. He then began kissing my neck, moving down to my breasts, then to my stomach, but something began to not feel right.

_Don't_.

Oh, great. Not now. Not again.

_Don't do it. Make him stop._

No, no no!

_Make him stop! MAKE HIM STOP!_

The voice was screaming at me now. All of a sudden, I felt Green violently shaking me back into reality, practically shouting in my ear, but all I heard was incoherent noise. Finally, the words came into focus.

"Hey, Blue, what's wrong with you?" He was yelling. "Snap out of it!" I looked at him in shock, wide-eyed at what just transpired inside my head. Green stopped shaking me and just looked at me, an expression of pure fear written across his face.

"I'm sorry," I said meekly. He breathed a sigh of relief.

"Don't do that to me!" He said, exasperated and clutching his chest. He crawled over to the edge of the bed and just sat there, breathing heavily, obviously still freaked out about what he just saw. Making no attempt to cover myself back up, I followed suit, ending up sitting next to him. He had apparently picked a spot on the carpet to stare at, because his eyes weren't moving. A long time passed before anyone spoke.

"Sorry," I said quietly. He immediately shook his head.

"Ah, it's not you're fault," he said only slightly louder. "It just reminded me of…what happened, you know?" Flashing back to six months ago, I immediately began tearing up. Seeing this, Green put his arms around me. "Shh, shh, it's ok," he cooed. "Don't cry." This, of course, only made me cry harder.

"I just keep flashing back to that night with Red," I said in between sobs. "I just can't get it out of my head."

"I know what you mean," he said wistfully. "I keep wishing I could go back and…figure something out. Maybe there was something we missed, something we could've prepared better for, something…" he trailed off.

"But then," he continued, "I think back and I realize the plan was perfect. We hit every mark on time, we planned for every possible scenario. They were just slightly better than we thought that night." I lifted my head and looked at him suspiciously.

"What are you saying?" I asked, almost threateningly.

"I'm saying that what happened to Red, it was inevitable." I was in shock at this.

"How can you say that?" I practically yelled. "He didn't have to die!"

"I'm not saying he did," Green tried to reassure me. "I'm saying it was unavoidable. It was absolutely horrible, what happened, but there was just no way around it." I was livid.

"I could've prevented it!" I screamed, standing up. "I could have done something to save him! I could've…!" I trailed off. Green gave me a knowing look.

"So that's it, then," he said. "That's what you've been feeling all this time? Guilt over Red's death?" I just looked at him, my lip still quivering. He hung his head. "Listen," he continued, "none of this was anybody's fault except Team Rocket's, ok? We all knew that what we were fighting for would end in bloodshed. We all knew the risks, especially Red. We all knew that even with as much planning, preparation and training as we did, some of us were still not going to make it out of there. Red just happened to be the unluckiest of us that night."

"Easy for you to say," I said, irritated but still crying, "you didn't have to see it happen."

"I'm not saying I did. I'm saying it wasn't your fault. I'm saying if you talk about what exactly happened, you can finally learn to let go." He looked at me with deep concern, and a strong, caring tone in his voice. I sat back on the bed and buried my face in my hands once again. Green stood up and got dressed.

"I'm gonna make a phone call," he said, "You should probably put some clothes on." He started to walk outside, but instead turned around and said, "I don't know if you've ever stopped to think about this, but if you feel this bad, how do you think Yellow feels?"

"She seems over it."

"Yeah, but she's still his sister. She deserves to know how it happened more than you." And with that, he walked away.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

I sat on my bed for quite a while, thinking about what had just happened between me and Green. He brought up some excellent points, but something still didn't sit right with me. I couldn't put my finger on it for the life of me.

_They'll hate you if you tell them_.

'Son of a bitch.'

_Don't tell them what happened. If you do, they'll just kill you._

'No they won't. It's just like Green said, we all knew the costs of fighting for our freedom.'

_You think Green knows what he's talking about? He hates you the most._

'No he doesn't.' The voice was getting louder, more malignant.

_He knows what you did._

'No…' I began rocking back and forth on the bed, my hands covering my ears in a futile attempt to mute the voice.

_He wants you dead._

"No he doesn't!" I yelled. The voice was a loud snarl.

_I want you dead._

Just as the voice uttered this remark, I heard the sound of the front door opening, followed immediately by Yellow greeting Green. They began talking about random things that didn't interest me, so I listened again for the voice.

Nothing.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Realizing I was still nearly naked, I began getting dressed. As I did, I could still hear what Yellow and Green were talking about, word for word.

"So I got your message," Yellow said. "How's she doing?"

"I dunno," Green said. "She's still really broken up about Red. I mean, I can understand not wanting to talk about it, but it's been six months. I think we all deserve to know what happened, you especially."

There was a long pause before Yellow spoke.

"I know I always say things like 'She'll tell us when she's ready,'" she began, "but he was my brother. I think we've waited long enough, you know? And I mean, I can tell she feels guilty about SOMETHING, but you can't be a prisoner to your own guilt. You've got to break free of your secrets before your secrets break you. No matter how hard it will be to tell us the truth, it can't be nearly as hard as shouldering that burden on your own 24/7 for six months. I mean, we fought for our freedom together. All of us. My brother was a casualty of that war, I get that. I just…want to know how he died, you know? What makes Blue so guilty in all of this? I'd say if any of us are guilty it'd be you and me. I mean, we killed so many people and their Pokémon…I don't even know what to think about myself anymore."

"I hear you," Green said. "I always try to come across as this guy who just laughs everything off, who doesn't really give a shit about anything, but every time I look in the mirror, every time I'm by myself, hell, every time there's a lull in the conversation, I think back to that night and all the horrible things we had to witness. And I try to tell myself that those Rockets knew what they were getting into. They practically had this coming to them. But then I always backtrack into the same guilt." Green began to get more agitated, his voice starting to waver. "I mean, those people had families, right? Who the hell were we to take that away from them? Who the hell were we to—" He broke off.

There was another long pause. And then, I heard something. Something different. Something I had never heard nor expected to hear in all my years of living.

Yellow was crying.

The pillar of strength, the thousand-foot crutch, the damn-near holy person I had come to know and love over our entire lives, the last person on Earth anyone would ever expect to do so, was bawling her eyes out.

"I just miss him so much," she was saying in between heavy sobs.

"I do too, Yellow," I could hear Green say. His voice was shaking. "I do too."

At that point, I finally realized the true damage of withholding the untold story. I decided they finally deserved to know everything I had been holding out on. With the voice in my head going from screaming to the sound of pure chaos at this decision, I hardened the fuck up nonetheless and confronted the two people crying on my couch.

"Yellow? Green?" I said. They both looked up at me. "I just wanted to say I'm really sorry for not being a proper friend to either of you. I've been incredibly selfish about everything since the incident, and doing that to two people I've laid my life on the line for to win our freedom just isn't right. So again, I'm really sorry. I hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me."

Yellow and Green both looked at each other for a second before Yellow said, "Yeah, everything's cool." Christ, she was even smiling again. "I'm glad you apologized."

"Great," I said, sighing slightly, but taking a deep breath. "Now that that's over with, I'm ready to tell you how Red died."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

"The night we invaded the Rocket central headquarters, we were supposed to split up into two groups: You two were in one group, and Red and I were in the other. Red and I were going to infiltrate from the northern entrance, as you know, which led straight to Giovanni's room. Your job was to draw out the guards so we could sneak past everybody else and head straight for the big boss. Red had the route memorized, so he was in front the whole time. We were climbing through the air ducts and when we got to the wing in which we were supposed to exit the ductwork, Red, expecting most of the guards to have been called off to defend the front door, cautiously looked out and apparently saw some. He called out his Snorlax and Pikachu and they did their usual thing, killing everybody in the room. We both jumped down onto the floor and walked towards the door that would lead to Giovanni's room.

"Red was cracking the code on the door while I was standing off to the side, watching for anybody to get up, and right as it finally opened, Red was hit in the face and flew backwards. I remember screaming and seeing a shotgun barrel being pointed at me. The man holding it was about to pull the trigger, but Snorlax jumped in front of me and took the full force of the blast. At this point, Red had gotten back up, blood all over his face, and tackled the guy holding the gun. At the same time, Pikachu ran behind both of them, apparently to kill a second person there. I couldn't help but just stand there, shocked.

"Finally coming to my senses, I knelt down at Snorlax to see if he was okay. He looked at me with those sad eyes that knew he was going to die. Oh, it was horrible!" I paused at this point to collect myself. "I stared at him for another couple of minutes before he finally uttered his last sounds, at which point I stood back up and ran towards the sounds of fighting. I pulled out Blastoise's ball, but right as I got through the threshold of the door, I saw that Red was pinned to the floor by another Rocket. As a small yellow thing caught the corner of my eye, I threw the ball in my hand to the floor, calling out Blastoise, picking up a shotgun at the same time. At that point, I looked back at the Rocket, who now had Red in a human shield hold and a gun pointed to Red's head. I pointed my gun at both of them. We stood staring at each other for quite a while, Red and I, and he was pleading for me to shoot the both of them, and to continue on to kill Giovanni. He kept saying things like 'Just do it!', 'Just shoot!' and 'Kill this motherfucker, then go kill the other son of a bitch!'

"The Rocket agent took Red into a room further back in the facility. It appeared that the room we had found was only the front room of Giovanni's quarters. Blastoise and I followed slowly and walked into a small room with Giovanni himself.

"'I offer you a choice, young girl,' he said to me. 'You can either shoot this agent, killing your friend, or you can drop the gun and save both of your lives. Which will it be?'" I paused to take a breath. "And believe me, guys, when I say that my first instinct was to drop the gun and surrender both of our lives. But then I started to think about everything that these fuckers did. What they did to all our parents, what they did to my mother, everything!" I was crying profusely at this point. "I thought about that, and I just couldn't help myself. I pulled the trigger!" I was literally screaming. "I pulled the trigger and I killed all of them! I killed Red! I killed him! I killed him!" I threw myself on to the ground, sobbing my eyes out, repeating this last phrase over and over.

Almost everything was a blank for me after that moment in time. I remember looking at their faces quite some time later. They were in shock, clearly having trouble digesting just what the hell they heard. Green, after quite a long time, finally got up and walked outside, while Yellow delved deep into thought, her face frozen in time with the same look of shock she had on throughout the entirety of my story.

Emotionally drained, I stood up. I looked at Yellow, who kept staring at the ground, and said the only two words left to say.

"I'm sorry."

I walked into my room, shut the door, and fell sound asleep.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

I woke up with the sound of the clock chiming five times, and Yellow getting up to do her usual morning routine. Still emotionally exhausted and in a sort of trance, I automatically walked outside my room. Catching Yellow as she was about to leave for her run, I said the only thing my tired mind could come up with.

"Hey."

Surprised, she turned around, and without another word, briskly walked toward me and gave me the tightest hug I've ever or since felt. We held each other for what seemed like ages before she finally broke our embrace and looked me in the eyes.

"Thank you," she said, voice wavering, "for telling me…us, about what happened that night." She smiled at me. I wish I could have said something more intelligible in response, but my body just didn't allow it.

"No problem," I said, shrugging my shoulders. I looked at the ground. Yellow was about to leave the house when I at last found my voice.

"You know," I said, "they called us the Freedom Fighters."

"Mmhmm. We said we were fighting the battle against slavery," she said somewhat morosely, nodding her head.

A long pause passed.

"Tell me," I lifted my head and looked her dead in the eyes, "did we win?"

After what seemed like ages, Yellow wordlessly turned around, walked to her room and softly shut the door. Soon, only the ticking of a clock, the whirr of a computer, and the sounds of gentle sobbing could be heard beyond that door…


End file.
